Leo Joseph '12 Birds, 3 Books, 5 Cities, and 3 Continents: An Ornithological Life Not Yet Finished’

Leo, recently retired from CSIRO, appreciates how pivotal it was for him to see certain species of bird in the wild in Australia and South America and the happy pursuit of a career studying evolution of birds, especially in these countries.

Abstract
Triggered by glimpses in childhood of Adelaide Rosellas and further ignited by experiences of almost inhaling books on Australian birds, seeing with awe museum collections of birds and not to mention a lifetime of camaraderie with like-minded friends and colleagues, I will look back (and ahead) on a life studying the evolution of Australian birds (with a little more yet to come). Having recently retired from CSIRO where I was Director of the Australian National Wildlife Collection from 2005-2025, I can look back and appreciate how pivotal it was for me to see certain species of birds in the wild, and to travel across Australian and South American landscapes, while all the while avidly absorbing the literature of ornithology and working with many colleagues. The result was perhaps dogged yet always happy pursuit of a career studying evolution of birds especially across Australia and South America.

Biography
Leo joined CSIRO as Director of the Australian National Wildlife Collection in November 2005. Originally from Adelaide, he developed an early but lifelong interest in the evolution of birds and especially in a museum collections environment, one that has always guided his work. He did undergraduate and Honours degrees at the University of Adelaide in 1977-79 and 1981, respectively. Then he worked in Australia and travelled in South America until doing a PhD at the University of Queensland from 1989-1994. For his thesis, he investigated the history of habitat diversity in eastern Australian rainforest birds. Then, from 1994-97, he held a Visiting Professorship in the Laboratorio De Evolución, Faculdad De Ciencias, Montevideo, Uruguay where he worked on shorebird evolution and the evolution of bird migration. His interest in integrating ecological diversity and evolution was by then well-established. In 1997 he took up a position in the Department of Ornithology at the then Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, in the USA. From 2003, he was Chair of the Department but returned to Australia in 2005. At CSIRO, he developed an extensive network of collaborators including fellow researchers in Australia, Europe and North America, postdoctoral researchers, PhD students and Honours students. He has amassed a body of work on the phylogeography and more recent evolutionary history of Australo-Papuan birds. He was awarded the D. L. Serventy medal for publication in Australian ornithology in 2018. In 2020 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Ornithological Societies. Despite all that, he remains a birdwatcher at heart and plans to do a lot more birdwatching in the coming years.

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